Souls at Sea
by JustJasper
Summary: For angst bingo 'drowning'. Prentiss and JJ are left out at sea to drown by an unsub. Warning: major character death. This fic has 2 possible endings.
1. Chapter 1

"**Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank - but that's not the same thing." - Joseph Conrad**

Thirty four hours, twenty two minutes, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen seconds. JJ knows that's how long it's been because Emily's watch is waterproof to fifty metres. JJ has the sense to check the time when they go in the water, pushed off the unsub's boat at gunpoint, both women groggy from being sedated. The cold water soon sees them completely alert.

Emily doesn't start to struggle until JJ can hear the call of birds.

"Seagulls!" she shouts, lifting her chin to avoid getting a mouthful of sea water as a wave crashes into them. "Emily! Seagulls!"

Emily is struggling, sinking, head not staying above the water.

"Come on!" JJ yells, reaching under and hoisting her up under her arms, even though the extra effort makes all the muscles of her body scream in protest. Whatever she's feeling she knows it must be worse for the other woman; she's a little older, and without the years of team swimming behind her.

"JJ.." the other women sees it rather than hears it over the sounds of the sea in the freezing dawn.

"Seagulls, Em!" she repeats, because she knows it's important, but for a few moments she can't remember why, so she pulls Emily with her, their swimming slowed in a break from exertion, but not stopping. "They stay close to land!" she yells, voice hoarse. "Reid told me once. They don't fly that far out to sea."

"Reid... clever Reid..." Emily murmurs. Her body is limp against JJ's, heavy. By a twist of fate that should have been inconsequential to their lives, but now governs their mortality, JJ naturally floats, Emily doesn't.

The sound of a ship's horn sounds, and it doesn't sound far. Emily perks up, trying to keep herself afloat as well as holding onto JJ.

"HEEEEEEELP!" JJ bellows, and she's sure she feels something in her throat snap with the effort.

"HEEEEELP!" Emily echoes, but it's weaker, and it seems to cost her a great deal of energy.

"HEEEEEELP! HEEEELP UUS! HELLO!"

The horn sounds again and it seems to be closer. JJ splutters out sea water, kicking hard with her legs and throwing her hands up, waving frantically.

""HEEEEEEELP! OVER HEEEERE! OVER HERE!"

It's almost a full minute of yelling when she realises Emily isn't holding onto her any more.

"Emily?"

She can't see her, and they have come this far, swum this long, and she's not going to lose her. She dives under and keeps her eyes open, even though they burn and itch from the salt, and just a foot below the surface it's murky and impossible. But through the gloom there's Emily, sinking slowly. JJ grabs at her hair because she's almost out of reach, grimacing to herself as she drags her friend back towards the surface by her scalp, grabbing under her arms when she can and breaking the surface.

"Emily?" she yells. The other woman's head lulls against her shoulder, her mouth open, unconscious.

The boat horn sounds again, but it's far away. JJ sobs suddenly with frustration, but fights it down and takes a firm hold on her friend, swimming on her back difficult while trying to keep Emily afloat.

And then it gets earlier, because the waves are moving in one direction, and it's the same direction they're going. Each kick of her legs hurts like hell and feels useless as a wave rolls them back, but then they surge forward with the next one.

JJ grabs Emily's wrist. Thirty six hours, fifteen minutes, seven, eight, nine seconds. She can see the shore. She can see it, and she cries out.

"Emily! Emily! We're almost there! Emily?"

No response. She's limp and pale, and she's not moving so she's even more at risk.

"Emily!"

The waves get choppier the closer they get to the shore.

"HELP!" she yells, casting her eyes out to the beach ahead through the morning mist. "HEEEELP!"

She dips below the water, Emily heavy on her, a mouthful of sea water, but she manages to resurface. Long moments of struggling and her heels hit something solid, and suddenly she's curling her toes in sand underfoot. It's hard to get momentum, so she lets the rolling waves help.

Emily is still unresponsive and JJ is exhausted, her muscles burning, her throat and her eyes are raw, they're soaking wet and freezing as she drags the other woman up onto the beach. They'd still in the rolling surf, but JJ can't manage any further.

"Emily..." he says hoarsely. "C'mon."

Emily isn't breathing, and JJ gasps painfully, because she doesn't know how long it's been.

"Em." She says even as he pushes the woman's dark hair away from her face and tilts her head back. "HELP US!" she cries out to the empty pebble beach, before she pinches Emily's nose and closes her mouth around the other's breathing a long breath into her. Her chest doesn't move.

She pushes Emily's shirt up over her chest, and almost laughs at the sight of the woman's bra: it's red with little black hearts printed all over it – a girl's-nights present from JJ three months ago. She laces her fingers against Emily's chest and starts compressions, counting in a hoarse whisper, using all the strength she can muster against Emily's chest. Thirty and then another breath. Thirty more, one hundred a minute.

"HELP US!" she screams, and administers another rescue breathe. "Come on Em, Em!"

Emily's lips are blue, but suddenly she's breathing, water bubbling up from out of her mouth. JJ grabs her shoulder and turns her, patting her back as she coughs weakly.

"E-e-e-m-m-ily." She says, shivers suddenly worse out of the water. The other woman's breathing is laboured, and it's all JJ can do to hear it over the gulls, the waves, the shouting –

The shouting.

And then everything is moving. Arms grab hold of her, trying to pull her to stand, and when that doesn't work whoever it is grabs her under her knees and carries her. She realises when she grabs around their neck that it's Hotch, and a few feet away, moving up the beach with them is Emily, lifeless but she knows, breathing in Morgan's arms.

"Emily!" she calls, reaching out, but nobody slows, and somebody says her name in what she works out later was probably reassurance. "Emily.." she tries again. Then everything is dark.


	2. Ending A

In half-consciousness she knows she's in fabric, and she's warm, but it's not comfortable like her own bed. It's light beyond her eyelids, and it would smell clean, if she couldn't smell the salt water in her hair. She forces her eyes open, and they immediately itch, but her arms feel too heavy to lift them.

"Jayje?" Garcia's voice.

And then she remembers thirty six hours in the water, she remembers gulls, she remembers pulling Emily ashore. Emily. Emily.

"Emily?" she pushes herself up, attempting to blink things into focus.

"Jayje, you've got to rest." Penelope is touching her arm, trying to stop her sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed, but she's not firm enough. When JJ moves she feels resistance, and looks down at her arm where she's connected to an IV. She pinches it near where it's inserted and pulls it out, hissing at the slight discomfort that is nothing like the fire in every muscle of her arms and legs.

"Where's Emily?" she almost slips as she sets her bare feet down on the floor, realising she hasn't been in a useless hospital gown that flaps open at the back since she was in hospital giving birth. She staggers to the door of the room and it hurts to pull it open, and she almost stumbles through, Garcia reaching for her arm to steady her. And she's aware of the team there, leaning against corridor walls or sitting on seats outside of her door. "Where's Emily?" she repeats. "Is she conscious?"

"You need to rest, JJ."

Hotch is standing in front of her, and she has to blink slowly a few times because her mind is slow and everything hurts.

"Hotch. Emily. Is she awake?"

And she sees the sadness on faces, and the pleading look from Garcia to Hotch, and the way his face sets, but it doesn't register as she simple waits for directions to Emily's room.

"JJ," Hotch starts slowly, "Emily didn't make it."

"Hotch." She says, caught between confusion and annoyance, because this is no time to joke.

And then it's not a joke.

"Hotch." Her voice wavers. "She was breathing."

"Yes, you revived her on the beach." Hotch says, and he's holding every muscle in place so his face doesn't twist into the grimace it wants to be. "You-"

"Hotch!" Garcia squeaks in warning, and she's shaking her head desperately. Morgan's head is in his hands, Reid looks utterly lost, Rossi is just staring at her. Hotch gives his own little shake of his head.

"When you were giving her CPR several of her ribs cracked. One punctured her lung, one punctured her heart. Warming her up in the ambulance on the way to the hospital increased blood flow, and she bled internally. She was dead on arrival."

Nothing.

"You couldn't have done anything, Jayje," Garcia is talking, "you tried to save her. This isn't... your fault."

Her knees buckle, and nobody expects it, so she lands in a heap on the floor. Before Garcia can swoop in and grab her, she lets out a desperate, mortified, miserable wail, and the woman recoils because she's never heard such a sound, especially from JJ. Her mouth is stretched wide in an ugly cry, eyes squeezed shut and her sobs wrack her body.

Thirty six hours they swam in a cold sea, hazy from sedation and aching from effort.

JJ is crying so loudly it's echoing through the corridor. Garcia is holding her upper arms, crying herself at her friend's pain and not knowing what to do. The rest of the team look on just as helplessly.

She wasn't breathing on the beach, and JJ saved her.

Will reaches the group at a run, but he stops dead at the sight of her, a crumpled heap on the floor sobbing openly.

Emily had started breathing, and JJ had had no idea she'd already killed her.

She wails louder, because what reason is there to stop? It's the only thing that might stop it hurting, though she hopes it never will, because she is the reason Emily is dead and she deserves for it to hurt forever, for her muscles to burn, to swim forever in her own sea, never allowed to stop, never allowed to drown.

Pause in her grief comes when two nurses carry her back into her room and sedate her.

"**Those you love will not drown or burn. They will fly away. Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They're flying away still." - Alice Hoffman**


	3. Ending B

In half-consciousness she knows she's in fabric, and she's warm, but it's not comfortable like her own bed. It's light beyond her eyelids, and it would smell clean, if she couldn't smell the salt water in her hair. She forces her eyes open, and they immediately itch, but her arms feel too heavy to lift them.

She tries to blink the room into focus, and as she does so she realises it's light because the whole room is white and grey and silver metal, but the lights are dim. There are mechanical sounds, bleeping, air being aspirated somewhere off to her right, so she turns her head.

The room is a double, she realises, and in the other bed is Emily. The relief that washes through her is flooded with sadness, because Emily is hooked up to machine after machine, and she's been intubated and a machine is breathing for her.

JJ feels the IV tug at her arm as she pushes away the blankets and puts her feet tentatively on the floor; everything screams in protest and pain. She grabs for the rolling stand her IV bag is connected to and manoeuvres it out from amongst the other machines, using it to support her. Her muscles feel like they're on fire, but she staggers slowly around her bed towards Emily's far side, where there's less machinery connected to her.

"Em." She says, even though she knows the woman will have been sedated.

Carefully she slides herself onto the hospital bed beside her unconscious friend, rearranging her own IV and making sure she's not resting on anything important as she curls up against Emily's side, under the blanket so that if Emily wake up she'll know she's not alone, and they'll be warm, because she's no doctor but she knows if they don't both have hypothermia or even pneumonia then they're the luckiest people in the world. She wraps her arm gently across the woman's middle, hooks an aching leg just over Emily's, as if she's anchoring herself.

She didn't let go in the ocean waves, she's not letting go now.

JJ is awake when Garcia and Will enter the room. Garcia lets out a soft gasp and JJ looks up; Will doesn't say a word, but he knows, and they both understand. He nods warmly, kindly, but he has to leave the room.

"Jayje-" Garcia seems to think otherwise of what she was going to say. "Get rested." She murmurs, excusing herself. JJ exhales slowly and lays her head back down against Emily's shoulder, closing her eyes and trying not to let the smell of the sea, all over them, imprint on her mind.

"**It was like drowning, only from the inside out." - Stephen King**


End file.
